ABSTRACT Purpose The purpose of this review was to examine the effects of aphasia therapy on language and/or communication outcome measures when treatment was initiated within four months post-onset. The review evaluated the methodological quality of relevant studies and summarised the findings of the high-quality studies according to three clinical questions about the provision of aphasia treatment

ABSTRACT Background There is an increasing amount of research that investigates the needs and wishes of people with aphasia and their relatives with regards to improving the accessibility of communication with healthcare professionals (HCP). An important way to improve this is by training HCP to use supportive conversation techniques and tools. Objectives This study aimed to inform the development

ABSTRACT Background The Boston Naming Test (BNT) is a neuropsychological tool that is widely utilized in clinical practice to detect naming difficulties (i.e., anomia) in patients with language disorders and to evaluate the semantic memory integrity in patients with cognitive impairment (i.e., Alzheimer’s Disease). The complete version of the test includes 60 items, but several abbreviated forms have

ABSTRACT Background: Many individuals with aphasia (IWA) experience sentence production deficits (SPD), which can affect their daily interactions. Even if distinct treatments have been developed to improve these deficits, their efficacy is not always thoroughly measured, which makes it difficult to determine the optimal treatment for a given IWA. Objective: The primary objective of this study is to

ABSTRACT Background: Collation of aphasia research data across settings, countries and study designs using big data principles will support analyses across different language modalities, levels of impairment, and therapy interventions in this heterogeneous population. Big data approaches in aphasia research may support vital analyses, which are unachievable within individual trial datasets. However

(2021). The 51st Clinical Aphasiology Conference. Aphasiology: Vol. 35, No. 10, pp. 1390-1391.

ABSTRACT This study was designed to estimate the economic burden of poststroke aphasia in the United States. The economic burden of aphasia was calculated based on three cost factors: medical and healthcare-related expenses, foregone wages from lost labor market activity, and the market value of informal care given within the home. Data from the 2018 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) were utilized

ABSTRACT Background Suprasegmental features are often affected by brain damage, and are typically accompanied by motor speech disorders such as dysarthria, apraxia of speech (AOS), and foreign accent syndrome (FAS). However, there is no report of a selective pitch accent disorder without motor speech impairments or FAS. Aims We describe a female Japanese patient who developed a selective pitch accent

ABSTRACT Background: Large-shared databases and automated language analyses allow for the application of new data analysis techniques that can shed new light on the connected speech of people with aphasia (PWA). Aims: To identify coherent clusters of PWA based on language output using unsupervised statistical algorithms and to identify features that are most strongly associated with those clusters

ABSTRACT Background Glioma (brain tumour) patients can suffer from mild linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive problems when the glioma is localised in an eloquent brain area. Word-finding problems are among the most frequently reported complaints. However, mild problems are difficult to measure with standard language tests because they are generally designed for more severe aphasic patients. Aims

ABSTRACT Background Stroke lesion size and location are understood to be more accurate predictors of recovery from aphasia than demographic variables such as age, education, or socioeconomic status. Aims We hypothesise that markedly high premorbid language function can influence functional recovery from aphasia. Methods & Procedures This case study reports the recovery of a 64-year-old right-handed

ABSTRACT Background Speech-language pathology practice guidelines recommend competency in counselling to support psychological adjustment and well-being in people with communication disability. However, there is limited information about what counselling education speech-language pathology students need or receive to attain this competency. Speech-language pathologists report that they frequently use

ABSTRACT Coordination of international aphasia research would minimise duplication of effort, support synergistic international activities across languages and multidisciplinary perspectives, and promote high-quality conduct and reporting of aphasia research, thereby increasing the relevance, transparency, and implementation of findings. The Collaboration of Aphasia Trialists (CATs) sought to develop

ABSTRACT Background It remains widely accepted that spontaneous recovery from aphasia is largely limited to the first related factors. This has direct implications for acute and chronic interventions for aphasia. few months following stroke. A few recent studies challenge this view, revealing that some individuals’ language abilities improve even during the chronic stage. Aims To identify prognostic

ABSTRACT Background: The involvement of service users and supporters/advocates in healthcare education and healthcare research has developed an increasingly high profile in recent years, but relatively little is known about collaborations involving people with aphasia and family members. Aims: To reflect on and learn from the experience of collaboration, examining the ways in which the involvement

ABSTRACT Background It is well-established that individuals with nonfluent aphasia produce proportionally more familiar or non-propositional language than neurotypical adults. Much less is known about the types of familiar language used or about the effects of either language context or impairment on usage patterns. Aims The purpose of this study was to identify and compare types of familiar language

ABSTRACT Intensity has been identified as an important determinant of treatment effectiveness in aphasia, especially in the chronic phase. Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia Program (ICAP) is a popular treatment delivery model that includes an array of treatment approaches provided at a high level of intensity. Only a few studies have reported the effect of ICAPs on language and communication so far.

ABSTRACT Background and Aims Previous studies have shown that age of acquisition affects language production in persons with aphasia (PWA), specifically, earlier-acquired words are better preserved compared to later-learned ones (for review, see Brysbaert & Ellis, 2016). Also, it has been argued that naming objects with lower name agreement requires inhibition of alternative names (Alario et al., 2004)

ABSTRACT Background: This is a qualitative case study of Sara, a 32-year-old black woman with nonfluent aphasia. Aims: Based on critical disability theory and poststructuralist approaches, we analyse the relationship between speech-language therapy and labour inclusion as founded in normalcy expectations. Methods and Procedures: The data were collected mainly at home and during therapy. The participants

ABSTRACT Background: The presence of naming difficulties in Parkinson’s Disease (PD), especially object naming difficulties, as well as the associated cognitive difficulties, remains a controversial topic. Aims: This study assesses object naming capacities in PD patients and the cognitive impairment related to the patients,’ word naming difficulties, whether linguistic, executive or associated to slower

ABSTRACT Background Language problems in dementia resemble the symptoms of aphasia in many respects. Persons with aphasia (PWA) and persons with dementia (PWD) present rather similar results on standardised language tests and cognitive screening tools. There is limited research that compares PWA’s and PWD’s language abilities, and a particularly small number of studies have an interactional focus.

ABSTRACT Background: Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is associated with progressive loss of language functions in the context of irreversible neurodegeneration, for which there is no cure. Speech-language therapy can help preserve language abilities, and most promisingly, interventions like transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) have been shown to augment the effectiveness of therapy. However

ABSTRACT Background According to the lexical retrieval hypothesis (LRH), the primary function of gestures is to facilitate word retrieval. Thus, individuals with aphasia (IWA) might benefit from gestures in case of word retrieval impairments. However, the facilitative effect of gestures on word finding is still unclear since most facilitation/treatment studies combined gesture with linguistic cues

ABSTRACT Background Perseverations in speech production tasks represent a pervasive symptom of chronic aphasia. Semantic perseverations (SPs) are defined as repetitive and unconscious production of specific linguistic forms previously produced, heard, or seen which share semantic relatedness with the target word. Neurochemically, SPs have been attributed to weakened activation of the target word due

ABSTRACT Up to 35–40% of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) present with language deficits falling within the spectrum of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). It is currently debated whether frontotemporal involvement occurs or not in motor neuron disease (MND) phenotypes that differ from classical ALS (i.e., both different-from-ALS MNDs and non-classical ALS endo-phenotypes) –

ABSTRACT Background: While communication partner training (CPT) is recommended in the treatment of aphasia, more research on the long-term effect of CPT is needed to enhance the knowledge base about its effects. Aim: To measure the effects both during training and maintenance phases of a CPT offered to a spouse of a man with aphasia by using quantitative and qualitative procedures. Method: One couple

ABSTRACT Introduction Infectious agents such as viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi, and arthropods can affect the meninges and/or the brain and trigger/relate to difficulties with language tasks. We reviewed the literature on language impairments in people with Central Nervous System (CNS) infections. Aims To review published reports of CNS infections that trigger/relate to difficulties with language

ABSTRACT Background Agrammatic speech is characterized by reduced speech rate, reduced utterance length and lack of grammatical complexity, with grammatical morphemes often omitted or substituted. At the word level, verbs have been argued to be particularly vulnerable: agrammatic speakers produce fewer verbs or use a less diverse range of verbs than unimpaired speakers and the use of finite verbs is

ABSTRACT Background Although spoken discourse is an outcome prioritised by all stakeholders in aphasia rehabilitation, assessment and treatment of discourse are not routine clinical practice. The small evidence base, varied clinical expertise, multiple barriers in the workplace, and challenges for clients in understanding their altered language abilities all contribute to this situation. These factors

ABSTRACT Background: We require high-quality information on the current burden, the types of therapy and resources available, methods of delivery, care pathways and long-term outcomes for people with aphasia. Aim: To document and inform international delivery of post-stroke aphasia treatment, to optimise recovery and reintegration of people with aphasia. Methods & Procedures: Multi-centre, prospective

ABSTRACT Background: People with aphasia have been engaging with research in a variety of ways. There are few descriptions of how they are involved in participatory research methodologies and even fewer reports describe their perspective on participating as co-researchers. Aims: To explore the experiences and reflections of two people with aphasia, BG and MG, on being involved in participatory research

ABSTRACT Background: Despite the clinical importance of assessing the efficiency and accuracy of fluency in terms of content words production during connected speech, assessments based on discourse tasks are very time-consuming and thus not clinically feasible. Aims (1) Examine the relationship between single-word naming and word retrieval during discourse production. (2) Investigate the relationship

ABSTRACT Background: Diagnosis of semantic impairment in stroke and progressive neuro-cognitive conditions is typically facilitated using tests of word comprehension, such as word-picture matching. Many of these tests are not controlled for psycholinguistic variables or the semantic relationships between competitor stimuli and involve pictures which are not controlled for ease of access. Semantic assessment

ABSTRACT Background: There has been a debate over how a word’s syntactic class is represented in the mind. One model claims that information is represented solely at the semantic level while another account holds that syntactic class information could be represented both at a semantic and an independent lexical level. Methods: Two aphasic participants with a significant advantage for naming verbs in

ABSTRACT Background: International public surveys have generally indicated very poor awareness and knowledge of aphasia among the general public. However, none has assessed aphasia awareness in Kuwait until now. Aim: The aim is to assess and investigate public awareness and knowledge of aphasia in Kuwait. Two samples were taken in 2013 and 2017 to examine awareness of aphasia over time. Methods & Procedures:

ABSTRACT Background: The Comprehensive Aphasia Test (CAT) has recently been adapted to a number of languages – including Hungarian – by an international network of multidisciplinary aphasia researchers, the Collaboration of Aphasia Trialists. In Hungarian, to date, there is no standardised test to assess people with aphasia (PWA). Aims: The aim of this paper was to evaluate psychometric properties

ABSTRACT Background: Treatment outcomes for functional communication, and for generalisation across languages and linguistic levels, remain mixed for bilinguals with aphasia (BWAs). Most studies on rehabilitation of BWAs report impairment-based approaches for participants with two broad similar Indo-European languages, but it remains unclear whether benefits extend to the untreated language or linguistic

ABSTRACT Background Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia Programs (ICAPs) implement evidence-based, holistic therapies in a short-duration cohort model. ICAPs are growing in popularity, yet there are still relatively few programs, partially due to the high cost of running an ICAP. ICAPs implemented by graduate student clinicians can reduce the overall cost of an ICAP, but Phase I efficacy data for cognitive-linguistic

ABSTRACT Background. Motor neuron disease (MND) patients can show oral language deficits mimicking those of frontotemporal degeneration (FTD). Although dysgraphic features have also been reported within the MND-FTD continuum, their characteristics and clinical relevance are still largely unexplored. Aims. Profiling writing disorders in MND patients can help further define their cognitive semiology

ABSTRACT Background: Collaborative referencing tasks have evolved from historically being used as experiments to study human interactions in various disciplines, to being adapted as a clinical intervention for individuals with cognitive-communication disorders such as aphasia. For both neurotypical adults and adults with cognitive-communication disorders, evidence on successful referencing is heavily

ABSTRACT Background: Connected speech-language (CSL) has been a promising measure of assessing cognitive decline in populations at-risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) populations. A common way to obtain CSL is through using picture description tasks such as the most frequently used image, “Cookie Theft” (CT). However, questions have been raised about using CT for diverse communities

(2021). Neurogenic communication disorders and the life participation approach: the social imperative in supporting individuals and families. Aphasiology. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT Introduction: Stroke patients with aphasia are often excluded from person-centred goal setting as part of their clinical care, despite a recommendation for person-centred goal setting in national clinical guidelines. Aim: To develop and field test an aphasia supplement to a person-centred goal setting package for stroke to better meet the needs of patients with aphasia. Methods: A multi-phase

ABSTRACT Background and Aim Cross-linguistic adaptations of aphasia assessment tools in Turkey are needed to improve aphasia assessment and rehabilitation with individuals speaking languages other than well-resourced languages. Aligned with this need, we conducted several studies to propose an adaptation of “The Comprehensive Aphasia Test” (CAT) into Turkish. Methods During this adaptation process;

ABSTRACT Background: For healthcare professionals, decision-makers and taxpayers, clinical guidelines and recommendations are tools for implementing interventions supported by research evidence. To ensure efficient, safe, and equal care for people with aphasia (PWA) in Sweden, it is vital that speech and language pathologists (SLPs) can work in accordance with evidence-based practice. Aim: To investigate

ABSTRACT Background: Previous studies have argued that there are two types of linguistic gender: grammatical gender, which is arbitrarily assigned to nouns, and semantic gender, which depends on the gender of the referent. Aim: We explore the hypothesis that these two types of gender entail distinct cognitive processes by investigating the performance of people with aphasia at the level of sentence

ABSTRACT Background: Vocoid epenthesis within consonant clusters has been claimed to contribute to the diagnosis of apraxia of speech. In clinical practice, the clinicians often doubt about the correct production of clusters as the C-C transition may be minimally disrupted. Aims: To demonstrate the value of acoustic analysis in clinical practice as a reliable complement to perceptive judgment. Methods

(2021). Review of Cummings (2020) Language in Dementia. Aphasiology. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT Background Previous findings have demonstrated the importance of discourse analysis in post-stroke aphasia, as it allows for in-depth examination of language impairment and represents key components of functional communication. However, little is known about the recovery of discourse over time. Aims The main aim of this study is to measure the longitudinal changes in descriptive discourse

ABSTRACT Background: Naming impairment is commonly noted in individuals with aphasia. However, object naming receives more attention than action naming. Furthermore, most studies include participants with aphasia due to only one aetiology, commonly stroke. We developed a new assessment, the Hopkins Action Naming Assessment (HANA), to evaluate action naming impairments. Aims: Our aims were to show that

ABSTRACT Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) commonly includes anomia and other communicative deficits that affect communicative participation and quality of life. Anomia treatment in MS is currently unexplored. Owing to the degenerative nature of MS, compensatory treatment might be preferable to restorative treatment. Semantic feature analysis (SFA) has been reported to have a treatment effect in

ABSTRACT Background Word retrieval deficits are one of the hallmark symptoms of people with aphasia (PWA). Psycholinguistic variables can predict word retrieval accuracy and latency in aphasia, but results to date have been mixed. Aims In this study, we investigate the effects of age of acquisition (AOA), familiarity, word frequency, and word length on the naming accuracy and reaction time of Persian-speaking

ABSTRACT Background: A clinical diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia relies on behavioral characteristics and patterns of atrophy to determine a variant: logopenic; nonfluent/agrammatic; or semantic. The dual stream model is a contemporary paradigm that has been applied widely to understand brain-behavior relationships; however, applications to neurodegenerative diseases like primary progressive

ABSTRACT Background: Apraxia of speech (AOS) has been central in aphasiology for over 200 years. It has generated theoretical and clinical controversy and contributed significantly to the development of knowledge of how speech is formulated and generated by the brain. Main Contribution: This short review introduces theoretical, experimental and clinical studies concerning current issues in apraxia

ABSTRACT Background: In aphasia, impairments affecting stages after lexical access have been subdivided into three types: 1. impairments specifying a sequence of phonemes after lexical access (the reproduction variety of conduction aphasia, CA); 2. impairments holding on to these representations during articulatory planning (the short-term memory (STM) variety of CA); and 3. Impairments specifying

ABSTRACT Background: Conducting Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in health research is a way of building knowledge that incorporates the experience of service users, adds research impact, and helps avoid wasting resources on findings that have little relevance to people or cannot be implemented. We argue that there is a need to extend ethical considerations currently focused on research participants

ABSTRACT Background: Previous studies explored information needs for carers of persons with aphasia; however, there is minimal research on information needs for carers of people with right hemisphere disorder (RHD). Carers have an important role in rehabilitation and long-term quality of life of a person with RHD. This study explores the information needs for carers throughout different periods of

ABSTRACT Background: Communication partner training (CPT) of health professionals (HP) is recommended in several international guidelines for stroke and aphasia. The effectiveness of CPT is well established, but research and evaluation is needed for implementation of CPT in different healthcare settings. The Health Professionals and Aphasia Questionnaire (HPAQ) was developed to make available a valid

ABSTRACT Background: Progressive neurodegenerative impairment with central language features, primary progressive aphasia (PPA), can be further distinguished for many individuals into one of three variants: semantic, non-fluent/agrammatic, and logopenic variant PPA. Variants differ in their relative preservation and deficits of language skills, particularly in word finding and grammar. The majority

ABSTRACT Background: Conversation is central to building and maintaining relationships. Thus, it is unsurprising that people with aphasia and their familiar conversation partners often desire improved conversational ability. However, to facilitate real-world communication, focusing on improving aphasic language difficulties is not enough. We also need a comprehensive understanding of how social actions